| Kaleidoscope Coaster (click here for pattern listing) |
This is done in Lizbeth size 20 Seagreen Light and Seagreen Dark. I still like the placement of the colors, which gives an outlining effect when seen from far away. I think I will try this again in colors that are closer together in shade.
A little while ago, I made a post about measuring yards of thread used in tatting. I was doing it the old fashioned way, measuring how much thread I loaded onto each shuttle, tatting the piece, and then seeing how much thread was left over. I have had a few people point me to tutorials by Sherry Pence and Karen Cabrera, in which the amount of thread is calculated beforehand. Sherry has a written tutorial on her blog, and Karen has a video (which I believe is based on Sherry's blog post).
(Aurora's tatting helper has also been mentioned, but I haven't gotten the chance to check it out and have to access an older computer to retrieve the bookmark for the site.) Edited to add: Phyllis has provided the link for the TatHelper website, you can access it by clicking here.
I decided to follow Sherry Pence's blog post and made some calculations for Round 2 of the doily pictured above. For this particular doily, there was an overestimation of the light green thread and an underestimation of the dark green thread. Here is the breakdown:
Light Green thread
Estimated usage: 15.3 yards
Actual usage: 14.56 yards
Dark Green thread
Estimated usage: 8.35 yards
Actual usage: 9.22 yards
I should mention that Sherry advises adding some extra to each measurement to account for picots and core thread. What I find interesting is that the light green thread didn't need any extra. In fact it used less than the amount calculated. The dark green thread required about 1 extra yard. Luckily, I erred on the safe side and had plenty of thread on my shuttles to complete Round 2 in one pass.